Serena by Ron Rash– In a recent book review of the best seller Gone Girl , I noted that despite that book being a very exciting mystery, there was a paucity of information about the background and psychological make up of the two protagonists. Similarly, Serena offers us two very strong characters, Serena and her husband Pemberton, with an interesting but certainly not a page turning, edge of your seat mystery. There is no significant in-depth backstory that really allows us to understand the characters and why they are who they are and how they got there. This certainly does not have to be the mission of every novel but without it we have to evaluate what have we been given? In this case it is an insight into the lives of the mostly men and some women who cut, sawed and hacked their way across the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina, Tennessee and surrounding areas in the late 1920s and early 30s’ while the country was in a depression. We came to appreciate the hardship and, at times, danger to life and limb that these lumbermen experienced. We get a glimpse at the movement to develop a national park system and the conflict with the entrepreneurs who were buying up the land to take the trees and minerals while essentially leaving it bare. We also meet a unique married couple who are not only the bosses of a company that is engaged in these practices but who also embody a mean spirited perhaps “evil” nature. They will think nothing of endangering their workers, manipulating and lying to potential business partners and doing whatever has to be done to achieve their ends. This includes a willingness to murder anyone. Thus the book in one sense is a morality play with the workers talking among themselves acting like a Greek chorus highlighting the code of ethics or rather lack of them which are being acted out. Serena, herself emerges as a person who burnt her bridges behind her (although we don’t quite really understand what they were made of) and would do anything to be the timber baroness of the US and then of Brazil. Her singlemindedness becomes frightening and is made of the stuff that would make her an ideal role for any great actress to undertake when Serena , the movie,is ultimately made.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn– It is a very difficult task to review a mystery novel such as this one without revealing the ultimate secrets and discoveries, which develop in the book. This is not a “spoiler alert” as I will not deprive you of the fun of reading this book, which I do recommend that you do

As the title hints, you will be immediately confronted by the fact that Nick Dunne, one the main characters in the book has come home one day and his wife Amy is nowhere to be found. He assumes she will return shortly but that is not the case. The distraught husband calls the police and the local detectives become characters in the story as they begin to assemble clues. Thanks to modern media this situation becomes a worldwide story, closely followed by newspapers, television and the Internet.

The format of the book is that there are alternate chapters written in the first person through the eyes and thoughts of Nick and Amy. This provides the reader with the back-story on the two protagonists and their relationship as well as insight into the evolving mystery. The great thing about this book is that it is clearly a page-turner that you don’t want to put down. The author gives us characters who pay attention to details but so does she. There are no wasted words. Every incident or piece of action is ultimately related to something else important in the story. There is also authenticity to the various situations. This is especially true when we are dealing with a mystery where the police are involved. It has to be assumed that the readers have watched CSI and a bunch of other TV crime shows so they come to expect DNA analysis and the like.

However in a typical crime show on TV we expect interesting, even fanciful characters but in a top-notch best selling novel we also expect insight into the characters and their personalities, which are realistic and internally consistent.  Those of us who probe the human psyche for a living (being a psychiatrist) especially appreciate this. We meet Amy Dunne’s parents and we do come to understand her unique upbringing but that is as far as it seems to take us. Otherwise she is presented as a beautiful, intelligent woman who was a great catch for Nick. Similarly Nick’s persona is invented as some typical guy that everyone might know and like but we really don’t have a clue about the determinants of his psychological development despite meeting father who basically only utters one sentence over and over. We have very little insight into the two stars of the show.

On the other hand I found it quite interesting to see the authors’ detailed description in the acknowledgment section of the warm, rich relationship that she has with her own family. This only suggests the vivid imagination that she has to have in order to construct the characters in her novel who were quite different.

Despite some the above stated reservations we do own a debt of gratitude to the author for providing a very good read.

Johnny Carson by Henry Bushkin Imagine that you have a good friend with whom you visit on a regular basis for more than 15 years . He died several years ago and you learn that someone who knew him very well has just written a book about him. You probably would be very drawn to want to read that book as was I when this book came out about Johnny Carson. I would periodically watch the Tonite Show, which he hosted for thirty years between 1962 and 1992. The book was written by Henry Bushkin, who Carson once described as his best friend. Bushkin met Carson in 1970 when he was interviewed by him and hired as his personal attorney when Bushkin was just a few years out of law school. As I got into the book I developed the uncomfortable feeling that not only was the author not being a very loyal friend by revealing Carson’s personal life and depicting him as mostly not a very nice guy, but that he also was breaching his code of ethics as a lawyer by discussing things that were told to him in his role as Carson’s attorney. (I understand that lawyers may debate the issue of whether such lawyer client privilege exists after death.) For example very early in his tenure as Carson’s lawyer he accompanied him and a small raiding party that broke into Carson’s second wife’s apartment in which she was living while they were separated. She wasn’t there at the time and the purpose of the break-in was to discover evidence that she was having an affair which they did find. Bushkin was ready to answer the police if they were caught by claiming that it was Johnny’s apartment since he was providing all his wife’s financial support at that time. There was a time during Carson’s run with NBC when his contract was due to run out and he was being courted by ABC. All the behind the scenes secret details how  Bushkin and Carson led ABC on to think that they might go with them while using the inducements being offered to them by ABC to extract more from NBC were revealed. Johnny’s marital infidelities were also freely discussed with a hint that Bushkin was also cheating on his own  wife. In fact, Bushkin’s explanation for his own wife leaving him was because she couldn’t tolerate his putting Carson over her as he would be frequently away in the evening as well as out of town whenever Carson traveled and needed him. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this book was the depiction of  Johnny Carson’s character  as a superficial man who had very little capacity to care about other people. He was shown to have no meaningful relationship with his sons when they were children or adults. When Joan Rivers,  who he invited to be a substitute host for him on his show many times, accepted a deal to have her own show on another network opposite his show, he never spoke with her again. His need to be praised and adored by others, as well as his questionable honesty, was illustrated by how he played tennis. Bushkin who apparently was an excellent tennis player was expected to play tennis with Carson, who loved the game, Bushkin noted that Carson would frequently call line shots in his favor even when they were not and would accept (and apparently expect) Bushkin calling them in Carson’s favor even when they were not.  Bushkin attributed Carson’s inability to have genuine caring relationships to be related to his mother Ruth who was described as a nasty person. It was clear that Bushkin became a very wealthy man himself as result of his association with Carson and participation in some of the business deals that he helped set up for his boss. Carson eventually fired Bushkin in 1988 because he felt that he was not being totally loyal to him and did not put Carson’s interest above his own.  Therefore it should be of little surprise as with this book Carson’s “good friend” and attorney appears to care little about preserving his legacy and  reputation as the warm likeable guy that so many people spent so many evenings with as they enjoyed The Tonite Show. The end product which he produced is really quite superficial and probably doesn’t “tell all” but certainly “belittles much” about Johnny . Don’t reward the author as I did by purchasing this book.  If  you must read it, take it out from the library.